1,360
edits
Flying the Shuttle - Abort Procedures Overview: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Flying the Shuttle - Abort Procedures Overview (view source)
Revision as of 08:49, 26 April 2016
, 26 April 2016→We're going to Africa! - a TAL tutorial
| Line 106: | Line 106: | ||
{{WIP}} | {{WIP}} | ||
(written for the devel version of April 2016) | |||
<i>In this tutorial, you'll learn how to fly a transatlantic abort landing (TAL) and how to configure the Shuttle's systems accordingly. Since you'll have to act under pressure and do a lot of things in a relatively short time, be sure you're familiar with operating the avionics and the system before giving it a try. Also, you need to be able to control a nominal launch and fly an atmospheric entry.</i> | |||
* Start Flightgear with the commandline options <code>--aircraft=SpaceShuttle-launch --lat=28.6206 --lon=-80.6133 --heading=270 --timeofday=morning</code> | |||
This places you set of a launch from Kennedy space center. A morning launch is useful because it will give you a daylight landing (consider the time difference between the US East Coast and Africa). | |||
* Do your pre-launch preparations for an autopilot-controlled launch into an orbital inclination of about 35 degrees, choose the northern branch of the launch azimuth. | |||
* While still on the launchpad, do <b>SPEC 50 PRO</b> to bring up the HORIZ SIT display - this may be more familiar for flying the TAEM pattern, but in fact it's also used to select the landing site - and the TAL site. On the upper left, there's item 40 TAL SITE. Make sure this is set to 7 (that's Banjul, The Gambia) which is where we'll be going from a launch into a low inclination orbit. | |||
[[File:TAL-tutorial01.jpg|600px|TAL tutorial 1]] | |||
* Now launch under auto-guidance, let the computer handle the Shuttle all the way to SRB-separation and then climb about a minute further till you're about here on the trajectory: | |||
[[File:TAL-tutorial02.jpg|900px|TAL tutorial 1]] | |||
Then use the engine cutoff switch {{Key press|Control|e}} to switch off the right main engine. | |||
This would of course never be done in reality - but the point is that we need the engine to cut out at a well-defined time. The failure time is the most important parameter used to determine what needs to be done during an abort, so we can't use a random failure scenario for this tutorial because if the engine fails too early, a TAL abort may be flat-out impossible, and if it fails late it may not be necessary. | |||
== Further reading == | == Further reading == | ||
[http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/events/aborts/ NASA human spaceflight page on abort modes] | [http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/events/aborts/ NASA human spaceflight page on abort modes] | ||